Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Weird Reality Of Business Growth

As your business grows, you may have noticed a weird pattern emerging. It’s common among businesses of all sizes: as you grow, your company takes two steps forward and then one step back.

For example, perhaps you and your executive team initiate a program to achieve certain benchmarks in revenue, or marketshare, or some other metric. You launch the program, the company moves forward with gusto toward that goal, and you achieve it.

Then, weeks or months later, you notice a trend: you’ve plateaued. Or perhaps, you’ve even gone back a little bit.

You went two steps forward in growth but then some of that growth stopped or even dropped, so you took one step back.

Many people would chalk this up to a loss of focus. That is, during the program or initiative, everyone in the organization was on board and pushing those numbers higher; but once the program or initiative wrapped up, people returned their focus to something else and they no longer work so hard at that goal.

However, I believe that’s only partially true. Sure, the temporary focus that shifts elsewhere will be a factor but there’s another reason for the plateau too: your company isn’t necessarily built to sustain the new numbers.

Let me explain (because I can almost hear an audible gasp from the readers of this article as they disagree vehemently with my assertion).